"Unfortunately so much commentary is self-serving or sensationalist. Pete Wargent shines through with his clear, sober & dispassionate analysis of the housing market, which is so valuable. Pete drills into the facts & unlocks the details that others gloss over in their rush to get a headline. On housing Pete is a must read, must follow - he is one of the finest property analysts in Australia" - Stephen Koukoulas, MD of Market Economics, former Senior Economics Adviser to Prime Minister Gillard.

"Pete Wargent is one of Australia's brightest financial minds - a must-follow for articulate, accurate & in-depth analysis." - David Scutt, Business Insider, leading Australian market analyst.

"I've been investing for over 40 years & read nearly every investment book ever written yet I still learned new concepts in his books. Pete Wargent is one of Australia's finest young financial commentators." - Michael Yardney, Australia's leading property expert, Amazon #1 best-selling author.

"The most knowledgeable person on Aussie real estate markets - Pete's work is great, loads of good data and charts, the most comprehensive analyst I follow in Australia. If you follow Australia, follow Pete Wargent" - Jonathan Tepper, Variant Perception, Global Macroeconomic Research, and author of the New York Times bestsellers 'End Game' and 'Code Red'.

"The level of detail in Pete's work is superlative across all of Australia's housing markets" - Grant Williams, co-founder RealVision, author of Things That Make You Go Hmmm...one of the world's most popular & widely-read financial publications.

In February, permanent and long term arrivals soared to 103,570, the single biggest month on record.

Meanwhile, long term departures fell to just 30,080, resulting a net intake of 73,490 in a single month, which puts the high volume of apartment construction in a different light.

Of course, immigration can dry up or even turn negative when the outlook turns bad, but for now population growth is absolutely hammering along.

It may seem odd that the monthly intake just hit a record high given weak employment figures.

But remember that most immigrants head for New South Wales and Victoria where the economies have been performing relatively well, and jobs vacancies have been highest.

Smoothing the permanent and long term immigration figures over the last year shows only an apparently small spike.

However, caution should always be urged when using these numbers from month to month, not least because overwhelmingly the "long term" departures from Australia have historically returned to Australia within a year.

There has been a very sharp drop in the number of permanent settlers from New Zealand and the United Kingdom in recent years.

The big numbers are now hailing from China, and especially India, with a crunching 2,330 Indian settlers in February.

The number of settlers from North Africa & the Middle East has also comfortably more than doubled over the past year, reflecting a quietly increased humanitarian intake.

Record visitors, many from China

Perhaps the less well understood side of the equation is the huge number of short term arrivals to Australia, which tore to another record in February at more than 8.36 million.

There has been a substantial uplift in the number of visitors from America and India, but the real driver has been another record surge in visitors from China.

Lunar New Year straddled January and February this year, but looking at the original data over the three months to February an unprecedented 525,500 visitors from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong graced Australian shores.